November 19, 2012 "The
Independent"
-- Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Here we go
again. Israel is going to “root out Palestinian terror” –
which it has been claiming to do, unsuccessfully, for 64
years – while Hamas, the latest in “Palestine’s” morbid
militias, announces that Israel has “opened the gates of
hell” by murdering its military leader, Ahmed al-Jabari.

Hezbollah several times announced that Israel had “opened
the gates of hell” for attacking Lebanon. Yasser Arafat, who
was a super-terrorist, then a super-statesman – after
capitulating on the White House lawn – and then became a
super-terrorist again when he realized he’d been conned by
Camp David; he, too waffled on about the “gates of hell” in
1982.

And we
journos are writing like performing bears, repeating all the
clichés we’ve used for the past 40 years. The killing of Mr
Jabari was a “targeted attack”, it was a “surgical air
strike” – like the Israeli “surgical air strikes” which
killed almost 17,000 civilians in Lebanon in 1982, the 1,200
Lebanese, most of them civilians, in 2006, or the 1,300
Palestinians, most of them civilians, in Gaza in 2008-9, or
the pregnant woman and the baby who were killed by the
“surgical air strikes” in Gaza last week – and the 11
civilians killed in one Gaza house yesterday. At least
Hamas, with their Godzilla rockets, don’t claim anything
“surgical” about them. They are meant to murder Israelis –
any Israelis, man woman or child.

As, in
truth, are the Israeli attacks on Gaza. But don’t say that
or you’ll be an anti-Semitic Nazi; almost as evil, wicked,
unspeakable, devilish and murderous as the Hamas movement
with which – again, please don’t mention this – Israel
happily negotiated in the Eighties when they encouraged this
bunch of mobsters to take power in Gaza and thus decapitate
the exiled super-terrorist Arafat. The new exchange rate in
Gaza for Palestinian and Israeli deaths has reached 16:1. It
will rise, of course. The exchange rate in 2008-9 was 100:1.

And we
are myth-making too. The last Israeli war in Gaza was such a
stunning success – “rooting out terror”, of course – that
their supposedly élite units couldn’t even find their own
captured soldier Gilad Shalit, eventually produced last year
by Mr Jabari in person.

Mr
Jabari was the “No 1 shadowy leader” of Hamas, according to
the Associated Press. But how on earth can he be shadowy
when we know his date of birth, family details, his years of
imprisonment by Israel during which he changed allegiance
from Fatah to Hamas? So while I’m on it, those years of
Israeli imprisonment didn’t exactly convert Mr Jabari to
pacifism, did they? Well, no tears then; he was a man who
lived by the sword and died by the sword, a fate which, of
course, will not afflict Israel’s warriors of the air as
they kill civilians in Gaza.

Washington supports Israel’s “right to defend itself” then
claims a spurious neutrality – as if Israel’s bombs on Gaza
didn’t come from the United States as assuredly as the
Fajr-5 rockets come from Iran.

Meanwhile, the pitiful William Hague holds Hamas
“principally responsible” for the latest war. But there is
no such evidence that this is true. According to The
Atlantic Monthly, the Israeli killing of a “mentally unfit”
Palestinian who strayed towards the border may have been the
start of the latest war. Others suspect the killing of a
small Palestinian boy may have been the provocation. But he
was shot dead by the Israelis when an armed Palestinian
group tried to cross the frontier and was confronted by
Israeli tanks. In which case Palestinian gunmen – albeit not
Hamas – may have kicked-off the whole shooting-match.

But is
there nothing to stop this nonsense, this garbage war?
Hundreds of rockets fall on Israel. True. Thousands of acres
of land are stolen from Arabs by Israel –for Jews and Jews
only – on the West Bank. There isn’t even enough land left
there now for a Palestinian state.

Delete
the last two sentences, please. There are only good guys and
bad guys in this outrageous conflict in which the Israelis
claim to be the good guys to the applause of Western
countries (who then wonder why a lot of Muslims don’t like
Westerners very much).

The
problem, oddly, is that Israel’s actions in the West Bank
and its siege of Gaza are bringing closer the very event
which Israeli trumpets it fears every day: that Israel faces
destruction.

In the
battle of rockets – not least Iran’s Fajr-5s and Hezbollah’s
drones – a new warpath is being trodden by both sides. It’s
no longer about Israeli tanks crossing the Lebanese border
or the Gaza border. It’s about rockets and hi-tech drones
and computer attacks – or “cyber-terrorism”, of course, if
committed by Muslims – and the human dross ripped apart by
the wayside will be even less relevant than it has been over
the past three days.

The
Arab awakening now takes its own path: its leaders are going
to have to follow their public’s mood. So, I suspect, is
poor old King Abdullah of Jordan. America’s clowning for
“peace” on Israel’s side is no longer worth the candle among
Arabs. And if Benjamin Netanyahu believes that the arrival
of the first Iranian Fajr rockets necessitates the Israeli
big bang on Iran, and then Iran fires back – and perhaps at
the Americans, too– and brings in Hezbollah – and Obama gets
swallowed up in another Western-Muslim war, what happens
then?

Well,
Israel will ask for a ceasefire, as it routinely does in
wars against Hezbollah. It will plead yet again for the
undying support of the West in its struggle against world
evil, Iran included.

And
why not praise the killing of Mr Jabari? Please forget that
the Israelis negotiated via the German secret service with
Mr Jabari himself, less than 12 months ago. You can’t
negotiate with “terrorists”, right? Israel calls this latest
bloodbath Operation Pillar of Defense. Pillar of Hypocrisy,
more like.

In accordance
with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational
purposes. Information Clearing House has no
affiliation whatsoever with the originator of
this article nor is Information ClearingHouse
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)